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ADDRESS 



ON THE 



I PECULIAR ADVANTAGES OE THE UNITED STATES 



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IN COMPARISON WITH OTHER NATIONS. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



FRANKLIN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 



ON THE 28TH OF JANUARY, 1847. 



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By the Hon. A. P. MAURY. 






NASHVILLE: 

W. F. BANG # CO ., PRINTERS, REPUBLICAN BANNER OFFICE. 



1847. 









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ADDRESS 



ON THE 



PECULIAR ADVANTAGES OF THE UNITED STATES 



IN COMPARISON WITH OTHER NATIONS. 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



FRANKLIN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, 



ON THE 28TH OF JANUARY, 1847. 









By the Hon. A. P. MAURY. 

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. * NASHVILLE: 

W. F. BANG $■ CO., PRINTERS, REPUBLICAN BANNER OFFICE. 

1847. 



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Ffbruary 6th, 1847. 
Sir: — The undersigned committee on the part of the Franklin 
Library Association, and the citizens generally, tender to you their obliga- 
tions for the very able and interesting address delivered by you before the 
Association, on the evening of the 28th of January, and request a copy for 
publication. 

We are, sir, most respectfully, 

Your friends and fellow-citizens, 

J. H. Mallory, ^ 
S. L. Graham, 



Hon. A. P. Maury. 



James Plunket, 
Tho. N. Figuers, 
J. R. Hunter. 



• Committee. 



February 8th, 1847. 

Gentlemen: — In compliance with the request contained in your note of 
the 6th inst., I herewith transmit you a copy of the address to which it re- 
fers. Very respectfully, &c, 

Messrs. J. H. Mallory, &c. A. P. MAURY. 



ADDRESS, 



When we contemplate the situation and extent of our country, the char- 
acter of its population and the nature of its institutions, we cannot but fe- 
licitate ourselves upon its present advantages, and form the most favorable 
augury of its future destinies. Situated in the temperate zone, between the 
25th and 49th degrees of North latitude, and with a longitudinal extent of 
fifty-seven degrees, it is blessed with a soil and climate of which the superior, 
and, I might add, the equal, is not extant upon the globe. — Washed at its 
eastern and western extremities, by the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, front- 
ing Europe on the one shore and Asia on the other, its broad armed ports 
invitingly expand themselves to the commerce of the world. Inhabited by a 
people sprung, for the most part, from the noblest race of human beings that 
has yet existed upon earth; a people speaking a common language, offering 
up their devotions at the shrine of a common religion, united together by 
the ties of a common government that was reared by the wisdom and ce- 
mented by the blood of a common ancestry, what is there to prevent it from 
attaining a degree of happiness and prosperity unparalleled in the annals 
of time] Thinly, even where most densely inhabited, in comparison with 
the countries of the older hemisphere, it has a vast domain of fertile and 
unappropriated land, stretching far away into the almost interminable west, 
over which, for centuries to come, population and free representative insti- 
tutions, with all their attendant train and progeny of benefits and blessings, 
may expatiate at large. 

In looking to the discovery and first settlement of this country and the 
circumstances attending them, the mind is forcibly impelled to the conclusion 
that they were shaped by a special providence to the attainment of special 
and momentous results. It was sought, in the first instance, as a place of 
refuge from tyranny, civil and religious. Throughout Christendom, no 
resting place was found for freedom of thought and of action in temporal 
or spiritual affairs. Catholic and Protestant Europe vied with each other in 
the penal severities which they imposed upon non-conformity to their own 
peculiar tenets of belief. While despotism held its wonted sway in mat- 
ters of civil polity, the mighty reforms effected by Luther, in religion, 
seemed likely to dwindle into this, viz: that to the sovereign authority of 
the State, instead of to Popes and Councils, belonged the rightful power of 
prescribing formulas of religious faith. 



G 

It was to fly, then, from this double tyranny over the body and the mind, 
that the Pilgrim Fathers first sought the shores of America. In their 
character and principles, we find enveloped the germs of the civil and re- 
ligious freedom enjoyed by their descendants, "as the rudiments of the plant 
are wrapped up in the parent seed." A virgin forest stretched, almost il- 
limitably, into the unexplored interior. No axe of civilization had, as yet, 
been applied to its roots. It was tenanted only by savages and wild beasts, 
both equally unconscious of the arts, as they would, alike, have disdained 
the restraints, of agricultural life. Thus situated, no disturbing causes, no 
time-honored and inveterate abuses, no social frame-work, radically defec- 
tive in its fundamental principles, existed in the midst of this new commu- 
nity, to fetter the free growth of its youthful limbs. No forms of a vicious 
or malign civilization were established in its vicinity, to warp it by the in- 
fluence of power, or infect it with the contagion of example. Far removed 
from extraneous influences; too distant from other orbs for their powers of 
attraction to give complexity or perturbation to its motions, this lone wes- 
tern star rose gradually above the horizon and advanced steadily towards the 
zenith of the political system. 

Between the position of the new community and the materials of which 
it was composed, there thus appears to have existed an harmonious confor- 
mity. Of a country so felicitously circumstanced in these regards, history 
furnishes no previous example. Instances, indeed, there may be, in which 
nations have aggregated to themselves a vast accession of territory and of 
population. But uniformly it will be found, that the sword has been the in- 
strument of these accessions; the adhesion to the new order of things, of 
provinces thus acquired, would be reluctant and enforced. Diversities of 
race, of language, of religion, of manners, customs and institutions would 
intervene to prevent the fusion and consolidation of the discordant elements. 
The fires of insurrection, lighted up by the attempt to mix together mate- 
rials so repulsive and combustible, would be scarcely extinguished in one di- 
rection, ere they would break out in another. And ages of continuous and 
successful sway, even under the most favorable circumstances of valor and 
conduct in a long line of able princes, would scarcely suffice to educe order 
out of the chaos thus occasioned. More frequently, however, the ill-ce- 
mented fabric would be disintegrated by the death of the conqueror, and the 
sundered provinces revert to their original state of separate existence, or 
be forced into new combinations by his ambitious lieutenants. 

In Europe, the obstacles to the formation of one homogeneous govern- 
ment, such as ours, embracing within its jurisdiction and control, the various 
nations of which it is composed, are many and insuperable. During the 
long existence of the feudal system and of the forms of government which 
grew out of it, that, continent was divided into a number of kingdoms of 
Kiitcv it less extent, inhabited by people sprung from different races, 



speaking different languages, holding little intercourse with each other and 
entertaining mutual jealousies and antipathies. These were again subdi- 
vided into innumerable petty feudatories, whose chiefs, perched upon their 
castled craggs, or entrenched within their baronial halls, paid but little re- 
gard to the authority of their nominal sovereigns, and claimed to exercise, 
at will, the right of warring as well upon each other, as with foreign states. 
Feuds, almost interminable, were the natural tendencies and results of this 
spirit of insubordination. — And, for ages, the condition of European society 
was that of which war forms the general rule, and peace the occasional ex- 
ception. International relationship, for the most part, was limited to the 
sending of embassies for the negotiation of hollow and short-lived truces, 
or for the formation of alliances between the weak for protection against 
the strong. The profession of arms was that which was held in highest 
esteem, and superior dexterity in the arts of killing, the best passport to 
public regard and consideration. Travel and traffic, even in the rare and 
short intervals between hostilities, were alike fettered by vexatious shackles, 
and by the perils of person and of property which attended adventures in 
either. 

The social and political state of Europe, it is true, has gradually under- 
gone considerable ameliorations. The evils growing out of such minute 
subdivisions of society, existing not only without concert, but in a state of 
actual antagonism to each other, became so extreme and insufferable as to 
operate their own cure. The lesser barons began to look to the king as 
their only shield of defence against their more powerful fellow-feudatories, 
and to feel the necessity of strengthening his arm in order to make that de- 
fence effectual. Hence, for several centuries, there was an evident and 
general tendency towards the repression of minor fiefdoms and principali- 
ties, and the concentration of the powers of the state in the sovereign head. 
The result was that feudalism, or at least its most anarchical features, was 
ultimately expelled from the political system, and its subject-vassals, absolved 
from the evils and incompatible obligations of a divided allegiance, became 
consolidated into compact monarchies. The increase and delusion of 
knowledge consequent on the discovery of printing and the new and more 
terrible engines of destruction which resulted from the in^ntion of gun- 
powder, uniting with the moral influences of Christianity concurred to dis- 
pose the minds of nations more favorably towards pea-e, and a cultivation 
of the arts of peace. A more liberal system of international intercourse 
was the fruit of these changes and agencies; and the maxims and principles 
thereby established were sanctioned by general consent or acquiescence, 
and gradually incorporated into the code of tne law of nations. Commerce 
and the industrial pursuits which feed it, were subjected to fewer restrictions, 
and, in process of time, even became the objects of systematic encourage- 
ment. 



But, notwithstanding the improvements which a more enlightened policy 
has effected in the social and political condition of Europe, there still exist 
insurmountable obstacles to the fusion of its several parts into one harmo- 
nious union. Nor is this position at all incompatible with the fact, already 
stated, that the kingdoms of which it is composed were themselves the re- 
sult of a process of consolidation. The elements of their population, though 
rendered discordant by the vitiating tendencies of the feudal system, were 
comparatively homogeneous; consisting principally of peoples having a com- 
mon, or at least a kindred origin, speaking the same language, or dialects 
of the same, and whose vicinity to each other necessitated an intimate 
union. Most of these kingdoms, it is true, have enlarged their territories 
by the conquest and incorporation of contiguous provinces; and some of these 
latter, by a fortunate conjunction of circumstances, concurring with the 
power and policy of the conquering States, have been made permanent ac- 
quisitions. But ages elapse, generations pass away, the traditions and re- 
collections of the past are measurably obliterated, before the inhabitants of 
provinces thus acquired, become reconciled in mind and feeling to their al- 
tered condition. A people thus involuntarily annexed can never be relied 
on in great emergencies. Look at the conquered provinces of Napoleon, 
falling off from his dominions, like autumnal leaves, before the blasts and 
snows which occasioned his irretrievable reverses in Russia. Look at the 
heroic efforts of the Poles to reconquer their nationality, and to wrest, from 
the infamous despoilers, the torn and bleeding fragments of their dismem- 
bered country. Look at the Austrian possession in Italy, ready to flame up 
into insurrection, at the falling among them of the least spark of hope that 
their ancient independence might be recovered. Look at Belgium, married 
to Holland by the Holy Alliance, but dissolving the bands by force of arms, 
and exacting, from the imposers of them, a tardy and reluctant recognition 
of her separate and independent existence. Look at Ireland forcibly an- 
nexed, centuries ago, to the crown of England, but so unconquerably averse 
to the union, that, even now, the readiest passport to the heart and confi- 
dence of an Irishman is the magic word "Repeal!" 

In the national rivalries, then; in the jealousies and antipathies; in the 
diversities of Hce, language, manners and customs which exist between the 
different kingdon^ f Europe, are to be found the obstacles to any perma- 
nent amalgamation into one of its present separate and distinct organiza- 
tions. These obstacle may, and sometimes do, yield to powerful and press- 
ing considerations of mt.tual interest: such as the security of crowned 
heads against popular encroachments, and the alliance of the weaker pow- 
ers to repress the ambition and prevent the aggrandizement of the stronger. 
But these combinations can neve* be otherwise than temporary, and are al- 
ways succeeded and, oftentimes, accompanied, by the breaking out, with 
renewed violence, of the accustomed feelings of international animosity. 



9 

Even as a tree, bent for a time from its wonted posture, resumes it with 
elasticity on the removal of the inflecting force. Constituted as human na- 
ture is, how indeed, could it be otherwise'! Inspect the map of Europe, 
dotted over with the red symbols of innumerable battle fields; where all the 
evil passions of human nature, roused to intense and infernal activity, have 
vented themselves through the death-dealing tubes of war! In many por- 
tions of that continent, there is not a city, and scarcely a village or hamlet, 
which has not become historical from having been the theatre of some 
mighty conflict between contending armies — as Carlyle hath it "of some 
bloody conjugation of the verb to kill!" Is it possible that these discordant 
elements will ever blend and harmonize'? That these national antipathies, 
fed by so many recollections of insults and injuries mutually given and in- 
flicted, will ever be permanently displaced by feelings of national prepos- 
session] However desirable it is that such should be the case, the uniform 
experience of mankind stamps the opposite conclusion with the seal of its 
authority. 

A verification and avouchment of these truths may be found in the facts 
and developements of contemporary history. The dynasty of Orleans, 
newly seated on the throne of France, and apprehending from the continen- 
tal powers an armed intervention unfavorable to its interests, sought with 
anxiety the alliance of England. To accomplish this object, the diplomatic 
subtleties of Talleyrand were put in requisition and an entente cordiale be- 
tween these two great and powerful rivals, ostensibly effected. While the 
danger was imminent and the policy of the measure obvious, it was main- 
tained in the spirit in which it had its origin. An altar of perpetual amity 
appeared to have been erected, on which the animosities engendered in a 
thousand years of strife and conflict were offered up, as incense, to the pre- 
siding deity. Several times of late, however, has this amicable arrange- 
ment been threatened with violent disruption. On either side of the chan- 
nel, upon every collision of interests, real or supposed, the ancient spirit of 
international hostility, smouldering rather than extinguished, breaks out in 
mutual ebullitions of invective and recrimination. And but that Louis 
Phillippe is the Napoleon of peace; and but that the stability of his 
dynastyis still, to a great extent involved in its preservation, the chords of 
amity would have, ere this, been broken in twain. But even Louis 
Phillippe, consummate politician as he is, and powerfully as he has been 
enabled to impress his will upon the foreign policy of France, will find it 
difficult much longer to stifle the voice, now struggling for utterance, of a 
hatred to which history and tradition furnish such inexhaustible supplies of 

aliment. 

Other instances might be adduced, in proof of the extreme tenuity of the 

threads which preserve the present pacific relations of Europe. But I will 

only refer in passing, to the forcible seizure, by Austria, and incorporation 

JR 



10 

with her territories, of the little Urban republic of Cracow, once the capi- 
tal of Poland, and, till lately, the only remaining vestige of that ancient 
and powerful kingdom. In 1815, at the congress of Vienna, its separate 
and independent existence, under the protection of the three northern 
powers that surround it, was solemnly guarantied by the allied sovereigns 
there assembled. Other infractions of that treaty have not been committed 
without specious or satisfactory grounds to justify or palliate them. As 
for instance the separation of Belgium from Holland, and the incorporation 
of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw with the Russian Empire. In the first 
instance it was Belgium, with arms in her hands, that demanded the disso- 
lution of a union which had been imposed on her by force. In the second, 
an insurrection of the Poles against the authorities which held them in par- 
tial subjection to Russia, gave plausible, at least, though insufficient grounds 
for depriving them of the small remnant of their ancient privileges, which 
was secured to them by the treaty of Vienna. But for the blotting out of 
Cracow from the map of nations, no extenuating circumstances can truth- 
fully be urged. For this high-handed act of spoliation and disfranchisement, 
the governing motive, whatever pretextious ones may be assigned, can only 
be referred to the grasping cupidity of territorial acquisition, unscrupulous of 
the means so that the end can be safely attained. The fact that the Poles, 
whose ancient capital it was, once rescued Vienna itself from the grasp of 
the Ottoman, and was the shield of Christendom against the inroads of 
Mohammedanism, thereby preserving it, perhaps, from forcible conversion 
to that infidel faith, adds to the infamous transaction, if possible, a still 
deeper hue of infamy. The protests of France and England against so 
flagrant an act of injustice, so glaring an infraction of the faith of treaties, 
to which those powers jointly with Austria the doer, and Russia and Prus- 
sia, the abettors of the deed, were parties, evince that a new element of 
discord has been introduced into the politics of Europe, perplexing the coun- 
cils of cabinets, and threatening the repose of nations. 

To this picture, thus hastily and imperfectly sketched, of the political con- 
dition of Europe, how advantageous the contrast presented by the situation 
and prospects of our country! Without much hyperbole, it may be said, 

"No pent-up Utica contracts our powers, 
But the whole boundless continent is ours!" 

eastwardly, westwardly, and, in a great degree, southwardly our territories 
have no limits but the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. 
While northwardly, a magnificent chain of inland seas, in connexion with 
the noble stream that conveys their surplus waters to the ocean, separate 
us, to a great extent, from the hyperborean possessions of England on this 
continent. No nation borders on our territories, possessed of power suffi- 
ciently formidable to excite our just apprehensions. No hive of nations, 



u 

such as formerly from northeastern Asia, sent out swarms of innumerable 
barbarians to desolate and lay waste the vast Empire of Rome, and appro- 
priate to themselves its richest provinces, exist any where on this hemis- 
phere, to threaten us with a similar infliction. No incongruous elements, 
to any disturbing extent, constitute an integral portion of our free popula- 
tion. No vestiges are extant in our midst of a people speaking a different 
language, which cannot be almost entirely effaced in the course of a few 
generations. No alien provinces, acquired by the sword, and annexed with- 
out the consent of their inhabitants, have, as yet, been forced into the fede- 
ral union. No recollection of insults given or received, of wrongs inflicted 
or endured, of fields incarnadined with mutual slaughter, none of those 
feelings of mingled hate and fear which smoulder in the bosoms of a con- 
quered race living in the midst of their conquerors, embitter the relations of 
citizen with citizen, or interrupt the intercourse of State with State. No 
privileges, civil, political or religious, are conferred upon the people of any 
one portion of our country, that are not equally, extended to the citizens of 
every other portion. No church establishment, converting Christianity into 
an engine of state, and making its ministers the instruments of worldly am- 
bition, prescribes the relations between man and his maker, or imposes re- 
straints upon the free exercise of conscience, the alone vice-gerent of God 
in the human soul. No navigable stream of any magnitude or importance, 
flowing to any considerable extent through ours, then passing through a 
foreign territory, subjects our commerce to the payment of tribute in its 
transit to the ocean. No vexatious custom-house restrictions or exactions, 
prevent the free interchange of commodities, the growth and produce of 
home industry, between the people of the different States or Territories, 
however widely separated by distance. In short, no country of the same 
extent, or, indeed of any considerable extent, was ever blessed with a soil 
so uniformly fertile, or enjoyed avenues of communication, natural and ar- 
tificial, so admirably adapted to all the purposes of intercourse, internal and 
external. 

From New York to Georgia, at the distance of from eighty to two hun- 
dred and fifty miles from the Atlantic, stretches a mighty chain of mountains, 
now sweeping in graceful curves and, anon, swelling into majestic altitudes, 
whose cloud-capt summits and fountful sides afford, to the regions below, 
perennial supplies of the liquid element; which, after having accomplished 
its first mission of fertilizing the soil, accumulates into noble rivers that 
bear away to market the manifold productions, in their ripened state, which 
it had quickened into life, when it first descended in showers, or welled, 
bubblingly, from the depths of its native fountains. Nor is its action limited 
to these beneficial agencies; for expanding into ample bays, and eddying 
into capacious harbors, it provides for the mariner havens of security from 
storms, and indicates the sites of the marts of commerce. This extensive 



region of country, thus amply furnished with all the elements oi' industrial 
prosperity, and inhabited by a people astute to discern and prompt to avail 
themselves of these advantages, has advanced in a ratio of population and 
wealth unparalleled in the eastern hemisphere, and only exceeded by the 
great valley of the Mississippi which lies beyond. 

This magnificent valley, extending from the forty-eighth degree of north 
latitude to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the Alleghanies on the east to the 
Rocky Mountains on the west, embracing an area exceeding one million and 
three hundred thousand square miles, comprises within its limits two thirds 
of the territory of the United States, and about one twenty-eighth part of 
the terraqueous globe! The majestic river whose name it bears, and whose 
waters irrigate it throughout, receiving tribute, in countless rivulets, from 
the two stupendous chains of mountains that form its eastern and western 
boundaries, furnishes, in connexion with its many large auxilliaries, a length 
and breadth of navigation unequalled by any other stream known to the an- 
nals of geography. Nor are its advantages summed up in the vast extent 
of its surface, nor in the number and magnitude of its navigable streams, all 
finding one majestic outlet to the ocean through the mighty father of the 
floods. In the fertility of its soil, in the salubrity of its climate, and in the 
value and variety of its productions, nature has been equally lavish of her 
benefactions upon it. A half century has scarcely elapsed, since its vast 
solitudes were first startled by the footsteps of approaching civilization. — 
Within that period, the greater portion of its forests have been felled. Its 
soil, enriched by the vegetable mould of centuries, has been cultivated with 
a care that has more than repaid the toil of the husbandman. Its rivers 
have exchanged the light dance of the Indian canoe for the nobler burden 
of the steamboat, freighted with the contributions of industry to the com- 
merce of the world. Cities, towns, villages, rural habitations, filled with a 
busy and cheerful population, have risen up every where upon its broad and 
teeming surface, and the varied sounds of many-handed labor, from myriad 
fields and workshops, ascend, in one diapason peal of grateful harmony, to 
the great giver and dispenser of blessings so inestimable! 

The two great divisions of our country whose general outlines I have 
thus endeavored to portray, though separated by a long range of mountain 
barriers, have yet been enabled, through the resources of art, to establish 
intimate relations of internal intercourse with each other. The lofty Alle- 
ghany has been compelled to bow his proud head to the spirit of Internal 
Improvement; to be bound in fetters of cemented rock and iron bars, and 
ere long, probably, will be subjected to the deeper humiliation of being 
ditched, for the establishment of still more intimate relations between them. 
Nay, more. A line of magnetic telegraph, connecting together the eastern 
and western commercial marts, has been laid across his summits; and per- 
tiaps, at this* moment, a fluid, kindred to that which is forged among his 



13 

thundercrags, and rivalling it in speed, is passing along it — has passed ere 
one can say 'tis passing — "winged" not "with red lightning and impetuous 
rage," but with peaceful intelligence of the transactions of governments 
and the operations of commerce. Other routes of internal communication 
have been opened or are in progress of being opened, connecting the city of 
New York with the Lakes and the Lakes with the Mississippi, through sev- 
eral of its tributaries. Also, one through the Carolinas and Georgia to the 
Tennessee river, which it is hoped will be continued to the Cumberland at 
Nashville. So that this great mountain barrier to intercourse between the 
east and the west, which in times past would have been deemed almost in- 
surmountable, may be said, for all the practical purposes of life, to be level- 
ed with the plains. 

The portion of our territory bordering on the great northern Lakes, con- 
stitutes, likewise, an important feature in the geography of the United 
States. From the immense basin of which it forms a part, this mighty 
chain of inland reservoirs, receiving constant accessions from a thousand 
streams, and, alternately, expanding into seas, and contracting into straits, 
sends a mass of waters to the ocean whose immensity of volume the earth- 
quake voice of its own stupendous cataract unceasingly proclaims! Inde- 
pendent of the connexion of these inland seas with the ocean, through the 
St. Lawrence, from the navigation of which we are excluded by the policy 
of England, the canals and railroads already constructed, or in process of 
construction, which connect them with the cities of New York and Boston, 
and with the Ohio, the Illinois and the Wabash rivers, give to the inhabi- 
tants of this part of our country the amplest commercial facilities. Another 
source of its prosperity is to be found in the fertility of its soil, which is pe- 
culiarly adapted to the growth of those grains which furnish the staff of 
life, and for which an unlimited demand is likely to arise in the markets of 
the world. Though most of this region has been but recently open to set- 
tlement, it is rapidly being filled up by an industrious and enterprising popu- 
lation. Rich harvests, the first fruits of its fresh and virgin fields, have al- 
ready been conveyed to market in quantities almost incredible. Cities and 
towns have risen up along its extensive shores, like so many exhalations. 
The busy hum of men ascends from wharves and thoroughfares, where re- 
cently naught was heard but the mingled howl and scream of the tenants of 
the woods and wilds. The wilderness of forest which, but yesterday, cov- 
ered the sites of these new creations, is being transformed into a wilderness 
of masts along side of them. Hundreds of vessels, impelled by steam or 
canvass, may be constantly seen cleaving their liquid way from port to port, 
richly laden with commodities, the growth and production of every clime. 

But there is still another portion of our country, to which I have not as 
yet adverted. Westward of the rocky mountains, at an average distance 
of five or six hundred miles from the Pacific Ocean, and extending from the 



14 

forty-ninth to the forty-second degrees of north latitude, lies the territory of 
Oregon; all of it, at least, that now belongs to the United States. Passing 
events indicate, with a near approach to certainty, that Upper California will 
be added to our possessions in that quarter. This portion, present and pros- 
pective, of our territory is represented to be, for the most part, broken and 
mountainous, but with many intervening valleys of greater or less fertility. 
Nor can it boast of but few large outlets to the ocean; and, of these, the 
navigation of the most considerable is obstructed by shoals and cataracts 
which form serious obstacles to commercial intercourse. These obstruc- 
tions, however, are doubtless superable to art, and will give way, in due time, 
to the onward progress of improvement. But, as if in partial recompense 
of this disadvantage, the region of country in question is possessed of seve- 
ral bays and harbors, of which, perhaps, the superior is not to be found in 
either hemisphere. Fitted and, from their local position, apparently de- 
signed by nature, to become the receptacles of an immense commerce, it is 
highly probable that, at no distant day, this purpose will be signally accom- 
plished. It falls within the scope and design of this lecture to state the 
considerations which lead to this belief. 

Europe and Asia, the two most important continents of the old world, are 
spread over such an immense extent of surface, and the obstructions to di- 
rect intercourse between them are of so grave a character, as to preclude the 
expectation that avenues of intercommunication will ever be opened, afford- 
ing the requisite facilities for the mutual exchange of their respective com- 
modities. The obstacles presented by lofty mountains and inhospitable de- 
serts might, perhaps, be surmounted, but for the character and condition of 
the people who inhabit or roam over them; who, differing from the western 
peoples in race, language, institutions, religion, and degrees of civilization, 
and, besides, entertaining towards them feelings of aversion and hostility, 
would probably withhold their consent from any plan of internal improve- 
ment that might be devised; or, if their consent could be obtained, their co- 
operation, in means or labor, could not reasonably be expected. The traffic, 
then, between the two continents, or at least the most commercial portions 
of them, being their eastern and western extremes, can only be carried on 
to advantage, by means of circuitous passages around the southernmost 
promontories of Africa or America. The extreme length of the voyage by 
either of these routes, and the perils uniformly encountered in doubling the 
stormy capes of Horn and of Good Hope, have induced several of the gov- 
ernments of Europe to seek some more direct and less dangerous route. 
Hence the hitherto fruitless efforts of England to find a passage through the 
north-west portion of this continent. Hence the projects which, from time 
to time, have been entertained, of uniting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by 
means of a canal across the narrow Isthmus that connects the continents of 
north and south America. For so felicitous is the geographical position of 



15 

the new world, that it is central with respect to Europe and Asia, or at least 
their more important portions, and that a ship-canal between the two 
oceans would become the highway of that immense commerce, which has 
not only enriched, but rendered paramount in power, every nation which has 
heretofore been enabled to appropriate it. 

Looking, then, to the geographical position of the United States, central 
in relation to the two extremes of this vast commerce : looking to the fact 
that its territories, stretching from ocean to ocean, are inhabited by one 
common people, and subject to the jurisdiction of one common government; 
that while the ports on its eastern shores open to the commerce of all the 
countries bordering on the Atlantic, its western extremity affords harbors, 
in which the navies of the world might ride in safety, and is separated from 
the richest countries of Asia, only by an ocean called Pacific from the 
tranquil character of its waters, it is worthy of grave consideration whether 
a channel might not be opened across its territories which would become the 
highway of the commerce of the world. The rocky mountains interpose 
the only barrier of importance to the consummation of this magnificent 
scheme. Although the authentic data, which scientific survey can alone 
furnish, is wanting in regard to the question of its practicability, yet when 
we reflect that the kindred barrier of the Alleghanies has been surmounted 
in several places; and that the waters of the Missouri and Columbia, and of 
the Arkansas and the Colorado of the west have their sources, respectively, 
in the opposite sides of this mountain, we are encouraged to believe that a 
communication, by canal or railroad, can be effected; and that at a cost tri- 
fling in comparison with the great results to be attained. Much light will, 
doubtless, be thrown upon this subject, when Col. Fremont shall have given 
to the public the result of his latest explorations in those remote and com- 
paratively unknown regions. Meantime the project of a citizen of New 
York to connect Lake Michigan with the Pacific by one continuous line of 
railroad, and its favorable reception in commercial circles at the east, show 
the sense there entertained of the feasibility of a much more extensive 
route. When this last barrier of the rocky mountains shall have been sur- 
mounted, as, sooner or later it will be, coute qui couie, an uninterrupted chan- 
nel willbe opened to the Gulf and Atlantic ports, and the United States wili 
become commercially, as it is geographically, the centre of the globe. San 
Francisco bay in California, and Puget's sound in Oregon, will be made the 
receptacles of the teas and silks, the spices and precious stones, of all those 
eastern luxuries, in short, which have ever been so much the coveted objects 
of desire among the nations of the west. From thence they will be distri- 
buted, in a thousand channels, to every part of the United States, and find 
their way through New York, or some other Atlantic seaport, to the coun- 
tries of Christendom. 

And while our country at large cannot but receive vast accessions of 



16 

wealth and power from the overflowings and deposits of this immense traf- 
fic, our territories on the Pacific will advance, in population and improve- 
ment, in a ratio corresponding to the growth and development of our other 
western possessions. Cities, towns and villages will arise within their borders 
and along their extensive line of seacoast; to which may be added, a rural 
population. For that region, in addition to its commercial advantages, is 
destined to become eminently agricultural — the granary ,in short, from whence 
bread-stuffs are to be sent to supply the overstocked and underfed popula- 
tion of eastern Asia with the means of subsistence, and to be exchanged, 
instead of specie, for the precious commodities in which they abound. 

I have said that this trade has enriched and made powerful every nation 
which has hitherto been able to engross it, or even to participate largely in 
its benefits. In ancient times, it constituted the main source of the opu- 
lence of Tyre and Sidon, whose merchants are mentioned in Holy Writ ? 
as having acquired the revenues and attained to the dignity of princes. 
And when Alexandria, established by the great Macedonian world-subduer, 
at one of the mouths of the Nile, was enabled, in consequence of its more 
eligible situation, to wrest from them the monopoly of this trade, the 
stream of their prosperity was dried up at its fountain head. Their decline 
commenced with the establishment and continued with the growth of the 
latter city. Their palaces, become desolate and untenanted, soon mouldered 
into dust; and the nets of fishermen, hung out to dry in the sun, fulfilling 
the prophetic curse, mark to the eye of the modern traveller where once 
they stood. 

Until the discovery of the passage around the Cape of Good Hope, which 
however circuitous, affords at least an uninterrupted navigation, the cost of 
the commodities in which this trade consists, was greatly enhanced by the 
disadvantages under which it was prosecuted. With camels, as the only 
feasible mode of conveyance, its path lay over arid wastes of sand, beset by 
tribes of wandering Arabs, whose propensity to pillage could only be re- 
strained by fear, or propitiated by tribute. Hence the delays which were 
frequently occasioned by the necessity of waiting for the formation of cara- 
vans which would be strong enough to overawe these lawless rovers of the 
desert. Of these caravans, years sometimes intervened between the de- 
parture and return. Yet so profitable was the traffic in which they were 
engaged, that it continued to be prosecuted in defiance of every obstacle; 
not only enriching the nations that had the enterprise to appropriate it, but, 
as if by the power of enchantment, causing cities to arise along its desert 
path. 

Nearly midway between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates, existed a 
verdant spot, several miles in extent, shaded by palm trees, and watered by 
a delicious spring, whose vivifying agencies had probably reclaimed it from 
the sandy waste. From time immemorial, it had been resorted to by the 



17 

the neighboring tribes, as a watering place for themselves and domestic an- 
imals. It was truly an oasis of the desert, but unimproved by art, and 
without habitations other than transient tents; until it was made the stop- 
ping place of the caravans, along whose path it lay, in their passage to and 
fro. From this little spot of verdure — this island of palms set in an ocean 
of sand — fed more by the flux and reflux of the commercial tide, than by its 
native fountain, sprung the queenly city of Palmyra, which, rapidly gather- 
ing to herself accessions of territory and of power, became, under the aus- 
pices of Odenatus and Zenobia, the metropolis of a mighty kingdom; and 
even placed herself in proud, and for a time, not unsuccessful antagonism 
with imperial Rome. But compelled, at length, to submit to the all-conquer- 
ing eagles of that mistress of the world, she gradually declined from her 
high and palmy state. The final blow to her prosperity was given in the 
discovery of other routes to the east presenting greater advantages; and 
"Palmyra, central in the desert, fell." Leaving no vestiges of her former 
power and opulence but mouldering walls and broken columns. Her tem- 
ples and palaces, her baths and porticoes have been all demolished and 
thrown down. "Her hundred gates have crumbled into ruins and her tombs 
are but as the dust they were designed to commemorate." Yet, as if to 
show the nothingness of man's works in comparison with those of nature, the 
little fountain which was the origin of all her fortunes, wells forth, doubt- 
less, as freshly and invitingly as when it first allayed the thirst of its prim- 
itive discoverers! 

An historical detail of the various revolutions which this trade has un- 
dergone would constitute of itself a lengthened treatise. Suffice, for our 
present purpose, to say that, during the middle ages, Venice and Genoa were 
indebted to it for the pre-eminence which they enjoyed in power and opu- 
lence. That their decline commenced from the period that the genius and 
enterprise of a Portuguese navigator, discovered the passage around the 
Cape of Good Hope, and made Portugal, in her turn, its chief recipient and 
beneficiary. That another route having been discovered around Cape Horn, 
and the spirit of commercial enterprise been aroused throughout Europe, 
other nations entered the lists of competition, of which Holland, France 
and England were the principal and most successful. That these latter, 
having obtained from the native princes of India, small grants of land, 
pretextiously as sites for mere trading establishments, made them the nuclei 
of large acquisitions of territory, afterwards wrested from those princes by 
arms or diplomacy. That these acquisitions ultimately enured to the bene- 
fit of England, in consequence of her naval superiority over France and 
Holland; and formed the commencement of that colossal empire, every year 
growing more colossal, which now overshadows the nations in its vicinity, 
yet existing by its sufferance, but which, perhaps, it is ultimately destined 
to absorb. 

C 



18 

These acquisitions and the consequent advantages which they give to 
England, have enabled her, for a long period of time, to engross to herself 
much the larger portion of this trade. A new competitor, however, has 
recently started up for a participation of its benefits in the United States; 
whose successful introduction of American manufactures of cotton goods 
into China has already excited the jealousy of England; compelling her 
government to relax the rigor of its restrictive system; to admit into her 
ports, duty-free, bread-stuffs, cotton and the raw materials, generally, which 
enter into its fabrication, in order to enable her manufacturers, the better to 
compete with ours in the markets of the east- If we have been able thus 
to compete with England in those markets, amidst the disadvantages already 
adverted to, superadded to that of a long, perilous and circuitous navigation, 
what may we not expect from American enterprise, when the proposed 
route across our territories shall have been opened? Four months is the 
common time, and seventy days the shortest possible period, in which a 
voyage can be performed from Liverpool to the nearest eastern ports. 
While, from Canton to San Francisco, goods can be conveyed by steam in 
fifteen or twenty days: and thence inland across the mountains in a like or 
less period of time. Nay more: by the magic aid of the telegraph, lines 
of which, if they do not precede, will follow in the wake of the steamboat 
and the rail-car, a merchant in New York, in fifteen minutes, can convey 
an order for a supply of goods to his correspondent in San Francisco, and 
after the lapse of as many days, receive them at the depot of the former 
city. When these things take place, as take place they will, if the proper 
spirit be aroused and the proper means be exerted, no efforts on the part of 
England, none on the part of Europe combined, short of the construction 
of a ship-canal across the American Isthmus, (which is not likely to be ef- 
fected soon if ever,) can prevent the ultimate monopoly by the United 
States of the Asiatic trade; an event which will produce a greater revolu- 
tion in commercial affairs than any which has taken place since the discov- 
ery of America. 

Nor will its effects be less important in a moral or political point of view. 
Since creation's dawn, the tide of emigration has been flowing with a steady 
current to the west; bearing on its bosom empire, religion, literature, and 
the arts of civilized life. On reaching the shores of Oregon, it will have 
accomplished the circle of the habitable globe. Eastern Asia and western 
America will confront each other from opposite sides of the same mighty 
ocean! The two forms of civilization in which they have been respectively 
moulded will be placed in juxtaposition and contrast. The one fixed, sta- 
tionary, inert and averse from all change. The other active, enterprizing, 
growing and progressive, and imbued with the principles of still further 
growth and progress. The one bigoted, exclusive, superstitious, idola- 
trous. The other rational, tolerant, religious, liberal and incorporating with 



19 

itself all of useful and ornamental that it may discover or invent. The one 
feeble, decrepid, paralytic and retaining little of its primitive vitality; the 
other young, fresh, vigorous, and instinct with the consciousness of ener- 
gies yet undeveloped. The one, in short, the production of nature's 'pren- 
tice hand. The other time's last and noblest offspring. 

Such are the elements of the two civilizations which will shortly confront 
each other from the opposite shores of the Pacific. The consequences of 
their proximity may be readily foreseen. The enlightened spirit of enter- 
prise which is characteristic of one of them, cannot fail to exercise an im- 
portant influence on the other. The lines of steam packets which will be 
established between the two countries, for the mutual interchange of com- 
modities, the growth and manufacture of each, respectively, will give rise 
to relations of social intercourse similar to those which connect Europe and 
America. The jealous system of exclusion and personal non-intercourse 
with foreigners, persisted in, for ages, by the most considerable nations of 
Asia, but in which a partial breach has been already effected by the arms 
and policy of England, will yet further relax before the sense of interest 
and the liberal spirit of the age. The Asiatic people will acquire a yet greater 
taste for the productions of western skill and industry. The prejudices and 
antipathies; the narrow and contracted views; the peacock-pride of self-im- 
portance, engendered by ages of social isolation and the feeling of superior 
national antiquity — a feeling by the way not altogether peculiar to Asia — 
these will all give way in time to the enlightening and liberalizing influences 
of social and commercial intercourse. These influences, operating on their 
opinions and manners, first in the large sea-port towns, and more slowly in 
the interior, will produce gradual and continually progressive changes in 
Asiatic society: ultimately conforming its structure to the more approved 
models of the western world. 

Such are the tendencies and such will be the effects of establishing with 
the east intimate relations of Commerce; that great pioneer in the work of 
social amelioration, without whose previous and preparative agencies even 
the missionaries of the gospel labor comparatively in vain. Under the pro- 
vidence of God, it is the great agent in civilizing and christianizing the 
nations, pagan and barbarous, who are susceptible of those regenerating 
processes; or of replacing them, when incorrigible, with a population sprung 
from other and nobler races. Within the last half century, an immense ex- 
pansion and development has been given both to the sphere and intensity 
of its operations. Exploring expeditions have been fitted out, repeatedly, 
by the great powers of Christendom, to traverse unknown seas; to sail into 
equatorial and circumpolar latitudes; braving solstitial heats, and equinoc- 
tial gales, and floating ice-bergs, for the purpose of finding out more direct 
and eligible routes between distant and important commercial points; of 
discovering unknown islands and continents; not to ply them, however, with 



20 

the engines of destruction — not, Alexander-like, to bring them in subjection 
to military sway, but to ascertain and delineate their respective positions; 
to acquire a knowledge of their productions and capabilities, and to estab- 
lish with them relations of friendship and intercourse. The distant and al- 
most inaccessible haunts of the whale and of other monsters of the deep that 
minister to the comforts and luxuries of man, have been surveyed and map- 
ped for the benefit of the hardy mariners who engage in the perilous occu- 
pation of the fisheries. The most considerable isles of the Australasian 
Archipelago, one of them of almost continental dimensions, whose native 
inhabitants, for the most part, belong physically and mentally, to the lowest 
grade of savages, have been colonized by England; whose settlements grad- 
ually spreading over them, as, under somewhat similar circumstances, over 
this continent, will carry the Anglo-Saxon laws and institutions into the 
heart of the southern ocean. Thus forming the nucleus around which civi- 
lization will circle and enlarge, until the sister isles of that ocean and even 
portions of the mighty continent of which they form the appanage, shall be 
embraced within the sphere of its beneficent influences. 

To England and the United States, then — the one operating through her 
insular and continental possessions in the east, the other by means of the 
intimate relations of social and commercial intercourse which she will be 
enabled to establish in consequence of her broad front on the Pacific ocean 
— to these powers, it would seem, the task has been assigned of infusing 
new life-blood into the almost extinct vitality of Asiatic institutions. That 
this momentous revolution will be slow of accomplishment, at least to hu- 
man perception, and in comparison with the life of man, is most true. So 
are all the evolutions of the divine policy in terrestrial affairs. Six thousand 
years have elapsed since mankind was created, and yet vice and ignorance 
are every where extant upon the earth. Near nineteen centuries have 
rolled away since the great expiatory sacrifice was made for the sins of the 
world, yet more than two-thirds of the human race still grovel in the dark- 
ness of paganism and idolatry. Yet are we taught to trust that the time is 
coming and will come when vice and ignorance, when paganism and idol- 
atry will be expelled the earth; when the animal propensities of man 
will be put under the control of his moral and intellectual faculties; and 
when a true and genuine religion will encircle the globe in its all-compre- 
hending embrace. The agencies whose present and prospective operations 
I have been endeavoring to trace, are, perhaps, some of the many complicat- 
ed means and arrangements of the deity, to effect these mighty changes. 

Having thus stated, too much at large I fear, the peculiar advantages of 
our country in comparison with other nations; its superiority, especially, in 
the remoteness of its situation; in the freedom and immunity from sinister 
influences of its early settlements; in the structure of its institutions; in the 
homogeneity of its population; in the*vas1 extent of its area; in ihc fertility 



21 

of its soil; in the mildness and salubrity of its climate; in the number and 
variety of the commercial veins and arteries which every where intersect 
its surface; in the breadth of front which it possesses upon the two most 
important oceans, opening upon the two most important divisions of the globe : 
and having urged the expediency in a commercial point of view, and with 
especial reference to the Asiatic trade, of extending the routes of internal 
communication already constructed, till they shall have united the Atlantic 
with the Pacific, allow me to subjoin some brief reflections on the duties 
and responsibilities which these manifold advantages impose. 

A country thus eminently and multifariously endowed, cannot but possess 
and exercise great power, moral, political and commercial. Already have 
we advanced with unexampled rapidity to a position in the front rank of 
nations. It is within our competency to become, at no distant Any, primus 
inter pares, the first among equals. No conceivable present limits can be 
assigned to our capacities of growth and development. One of the pecu- 
liar excellencies of our complex system of government is its capability of 
expansion over an indefinite extent of territory. The ancient and hack- 
neyed objection to republican institutions, that they could only be applied to 
small communities, has been completely obviated by the happy invention of 
a system, partly national and partly federative, in which local and municipal 
affairs are confided to the management of separate State organizations, and 
those which concern the whole union, whether foreign or domestic, are 
committed to the jurisdiction of a general government. Under this admi- 
rable system, the enterprizing spirit of our people, overleaping the obstacles 
interposed by mountain barriers and desert prairies, has been extending the 
area of freedom in a geometrical ratio of progression, towards the western- 
most verge of this continent. Soon that ultimate limit will have been at- 
tained, and all the intermediate country organized into States and included 
within the pale of the federal union. It becomes us, then, to cultivate those 
national virtues and qualities which will give happiness and prosperity to 
the millions on millions of human beings who are destined to occupy its 
vast domains. 

To the attainment of this object, the first and most important requisite — 
that without which all other means would be ineffective and unavailing, is 
the continued existence of the federal union. While every attempt, open 
or covert, to dissolve its ties, or to subvert its fundamental principles and 
compromises, should meet with prompt frustration and discomfiture, the 
originators and abetters of such projects should be blasted by the lightning 
of the public indignation. Immense, indeed, are the issues involved in its 
preservation! Incalculable the evils of its dismemberment! The angry 
passions which occasioned so great a catastrophe would become embittered 
and aggravated by new causes of dissension. Questions of disputed boun- 
dary would arise. Internal intercourse would be broken up, or shackled 



22 

with vexatious restrictions. Custom-houses with their onerous duties, for- 
tifications manned with garrisons and bristling with cannon, would garnish 
the frontiers of the newly organized confederacies. The most ruthless of 
all wars, that between kindred communities once endeared to each other by 
the ties of friendship, would inevitably ensue, and become complicated with 
the, if possible, still darker horrors of a servile war. Standing armies, cities 
sacked and pillaged, fields devastated and laid waste, homesteads violated 
and made red with the blood of their inmates, military license ending in 
military despotism, these are some of the consequences of a dissolution of 
the union. On the contrary, if continued as at present organized, and if a 
right direction be given to its powers and capacities of usefulness, what a 
prospect will be presented to the view of a not distant futurity? Liberty, 
regulated by law and restrained only from the license of disorder, embracing 
within the range of its beneficent rule the entire breadth of a mighty con- 
tinent! One people, one government, one religion, one destiny! What a 
theatre for the moral, physical and intellectual development of social and 
individual man] What a scope will it afford for the prosecution of all the 
industrial pursuits and for the elevation of the laborer to his proper rank in 
the scale of humanity! How will the eye and ear of the philanthropist find 
delightful exercise in the sights and sounds of a smiling, prosperous, happy 
land! What clearing of forests and ploughing of fields, what verdurous 
pastures and luxuriant harvests, what bleating of flocks and lowing of 
herds, what pushing of planes and striking of hammers, what puffing of en- 
gines and whirling of spindles, what whizzing of steam-cars and stamping 
of telegraphs, what wreathings of smoke and whitenings of canvass! — 
Where can free trade find an ampler or more fitting theatre for testing and 
developing its cherished theories? In what region of the globe can inter- 
nal improvement meet with equal scope and verge for the exercise of its 
powers, or equal means and opportunities of removing obstructions, of lev- 
eling inequalities of surface, of annihilating^ as it were, both time and 
space, and uniting a whole people in the indissoluble bonds of social and 
commercial intercourse ? 

And while we are thus drawing closer the ties which connect us together 
as a nation, we should carefully cultivate relations of amity with foreign 
powers. Peace is emphatically our policy — peace and the arts which it 
fosters and encourages — peace and the inventions and discoveries to which 
it gives impulse and development — peace and the ties of international bro- 
therhood which it multiplies and strengthens. — Our mission, I repeat it, is 
peace. To open the forest; to let in the sun upon the soil, and draw forth 
its hidden treasures; to rear the work-shop and forge the tools and imple- 
ments of labor; to restrain, and divert into prescribed channels, the wild 
energies of the cataract, and make it minister to the manufacture of food 
and the fabrication of raiment; to remove obstructions to the navigation of 



23 

our rivers, and open channels of communication between distant points; ta 
level the path and expedite the speed of the locomotive, with its long sequel 
of heavily-laden cars; to extend a net-work of magnetic telegraph through 
the length and breadth of the land and electrify the whole union with one 
simultaneous shock of intelligence in relation to political and commercial 
affairs; to open new avenues of trade with foreign countries, erect buoys 
and beacons, and improve harbors for the safe approach and anchorage of 
vessels; to provide means and facilities for the education of youth and for the 
cultivation of man's moral and mental nature, these are the victories of dove- 
eyed peace! How incalculably more beneficent are such pursuits — how 
transcendantly superior, in the scale of rational estimation, to the fierce 
tumults, the demoralizing agencies, the desolating ravages, "the brutal 
butcheries of vulgar war!" 

But we should not limit our efforts to the cultivation of friendly relations 
with foreign nations. Towards all, but especially towards the weaker pow- 
ers, our conduct should be characterized by justice, moderation, magnanim- 
ity, and forbearance. This is not more the dictate of duty than of true 
policy. A condition of permanent happiness and prosperity never has been 
and never will be accorded to a nation that habitually violates the eternal 
principles of rectitude! War, famine, "the pestilence that walketh in dark- 
ness," empty treasuries, inextinguishable debts, grinding taxes, a thinned 
and impoverished population, dismembered territories, ultimate national ex- 
tinction, or dispersion to the four quarters of the globe, these are the scourges 
and instruments of punishment with which the Almighty visits national 
transgressions long and obstinately persisted in! Individual crime may, and 
often does, go to the grave unwhipt of temporal justice! Its punishment, 
however, belongs to the retributions of eternity! But a nation, having no 
soul, is only answerable in its corporate capacity, for the deeds done in that 
capacity. Ages may elapse before the avenging bolt be sped; but ages of 
delay will only increase and intensify its destructive force. If this be true 
even of monarchies, where the crime of the people is only the negative one 
of sufferance, how much truer must it be of a republic in which, if wrong be 
committed, the people, themselves, must be the agents and perpetrators! 
National responsibility to the Almighty, for national transgressions of his 
laws! Trace empire in its circling march around the globe, and you will find 
that every line of its history points to this great focal truth! And if the voice 
of lost traditions that have failed to reach the ear of history, could now be 
heard, they would tell of many Troys unsung in verse, of many Sodoms and 
Gomorrahs unrecorded in prose, of many Siseras against whom "the stars 
in their courses have fought," with no inspired writer to predict or nan-ate 
their doom! 

We have, then, momentous duties to discharge — awful responsibilities to 
encounter, in the career that lies before us. Into our hands are confided 



24 

the destinies of republican institutions. It is here that liberty, an exile 
and an outcast from the elder hemisphere, has unfurled her banner with its 
blazonry of stars and stripes, and made the last rally of her forces against 
the inroads and encroachments of despotism. It is here that she has "gar- 
nered up her heart, and where she must either live, or bear no life" on earth! 
From every quarter of the globe, the eyes of the friends of human rights 
are turned upon us, in one concentric gaze of mingled anxiety and hope. 
If we are true to the vocation whereunto we are called; if we shall vindi- 
cate the capacity of man for self-government, and the consequent superior- 
ity of our institutions over those of other countries, by the greater rapidity 
of our growth and progress in all the elements of national well-being, and by 
our superior regard to justice, to the sanctity of contracts and the faith of 
treaties, we will become a beacon and a land-mark on the cliffs of time, to 
the nations of the earth — by whose light they may be guided in the recon- 
struction of their own defective forms of polity. But if we should become 
corrupt and unprincipled; if passion should dominate over reason; faction 
be paramount to patriotism; liberty degenerate into licentiousness; if, de- 
parting from the principles and compromises of the constitution, we should 
demolish the fair fabric of our glorious union; if, feeling power and forgetting 
rioht, we should follow in the beaten track of aggression and conquest, and 
delijrht more in the work of destruction and demolition, than in that of ere- 
ation and preservation; if forsaking the paths of peace, we should embark 
on the perilous billows of tempestuous war, no horoscope will be needed to 
forecast our destinies'! Ours and not ours only, but — bound up indissolubly 
with them — the fortunes of free institutions all the world over, will suffer 
disastrous shipwreck; and, borne on time's unebbing tide, will finally be lost 
in that great ocean of the past, where, already, in numbers numberless, 

"The graves of buried empires heave like passing waves." 



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